Netflix/Diamond Groovr Pictures present Connie Chiume (Mam’ Zikode), Michelle Botes (Tyra), Nobile Hunu K.H. (Siya), Senso Radebe (Tshepo), Robert Whitehead (Sean), Diamond Dube (Tour Guide), Lilian Dube (Gogo), Sandile Mahlangu (Muzi). Producers, Elvis Chucks/Adze Ugah; Executive Producers, Elvis Chucks; Director, Adze Ugah; Screenplay, Glenrose Ndlovu, Adze Ugah; Director of Photography, William Collinson. ©2021
I am still eating off the Netflix platform and am unprepared to join the chorus of the Nollywood March of the Maji onto the YouTube country, where there’s not much scrutiny, but the lot slap-A-thon, and the ‘glitz’ Philosophy. I’d be in tow with you all. Let me take care of this macabre tale from the Vaal Triangle, in a town named Sharpeville, in South Africa, in 1960. Jewel reminds me of the 69 black boys trapped in a reform school dormitory that was set on fire in Wrightsville, Arkansas, in 1959. Forty-eight made it alive. No justice, no headlines, no arrest. The incident in the Apartheid South Africa when the police shot at random, sixty-nine people in Sharpeville, in broad daylight. No headlines, no justice, and no arrest. That incident sent a pall over the village for eternity.
The film starts with a tour group led by a bald guard at the memorial site. He can be loud, too. Glenrose and Adze’s screenplay is poetically written. Understanding poetic terminology is necessary as it includes various figures of speech, such as simile, alliteration, metaphors, and more. It even consists of a dream sequence that muddles up the story. The film is rhetorically shot, with gorgeous lighting of the scenes, mostly natural, in which every shot can become a master stroke of a genius of painting a watercolor on canvas, an indication that Jewel is based on the life of a professional photographer. Jewel entirely looks like a National Geographic Magazine feature shot on location in South Africa.
As the Tour Guide (Diamond Dube) introduces the subject of the visit, a White woman, Tyra (Michelle Botes), among the tourists, is busy snapping pictures with a sophisticated camera, seemingly she is a professional. Tyra isn’t partaking in the lecture that the guide is giving. To her, it’s all an off-scene event because she is immersed in the click-click of her camera. She is on a quest to catch up on the guilt of an event in Sharpeville in 1960; she was not born then. To her, her spirit tells her she has been here, in Sharpeville, and by the river.
I want to unravel Jewel’s magic. The story centers around Tyra and Siya; the third character is the ‘river.’ It is all in the scene between Tyra and the husky, Sean (Robert Whitehead), a fellow, a little advanced in age and seemingly more intelligent than the young photographer, sitting by him. The dialogue centers around the massacre of the sixty-nine unarmed Africans killed by the apartheid South African government, then the chit chat segues into:
Man, “I always think that people who visit memorials to events that happened years, even before they were born, are looking for something to scratch that itch.”
Her, “I was almost born here. My father was assigned here (in Sharpeville) in the 1960s. That would depend on which side you’re on…. Why are you here?”
“White guilt. I guess.”
“Karma,” she pronounced, a little bit ecstatic.
“Whose cat did you kill in your past life? I hope you find something more interesting.”
“Maybe, Maybe I already have.”
The dialogue between Tyra and Sean is ominous. A mysterious charm draws her to Sharpeville, and she runs into Siya, whom she feels she has met in another life. “Looking for something to scratch the itch,” as Sean would say in this scene, is an indication that Tyra’s mission here is neither as a journalist to probe long ago incident that occurred in Sharpeville, nor enjoys shooting images of people on camera, the way her father shot the residents of the village with live bullets. She feels like she is a part of this village and the river, in some mysterious way.
“I missed out on all the actions that made this place famous.” Tyler divulged at some point. Tyler was born in Cape Town shortly after the 1960 massacre. Siya directs Tyra to the river where the grandmother is waiting for her. Is Tyra invited to the river as a sacrificial lamb to atone for her father’s actions in Sharpeville as a cop? According to the exchange between Sean and Tyra, Tyra has an “itch” she wants to get rid of, hence her trip to the Transvaal.
Tyra mysteriously befriends Siya: She takes up her unrelenting camera, click-click-click all over the town, and stops immediately as she clicks on Siya’s face, as if she has found in her quest, her Holy Grail. Tyra immediately hires Siya as her personal tour guide. The friendship grows into a lesbian relationship. Siya seemingly welcomes the affair, since after their body grinding, nose to nose, breast-to-breast, butt to butt dance scene, at the club. If it wasn’t for Tshepo’s timely intervention, they were about to go down on each other right here on the dance floor.
Siya has an abusive, arm-twisting, rough-rider type of boyfriend who only shows up to give Siya a hot doggystyle sex and goes his way. But Tshepo (Senso Radebe) is one of those young vigilantes who have not quite forgotten the evils that White men (police) meted out to his people, and he swore many times to avenge. He roves around town, with his younger brother in tow, like some evil spirits. Tshepo easily gets offended when Tyra crosses him by proposing to take Siya away from him and take her to Cape Town. It’s like adding salt to someone’s long night bruised ass. “First they came with guns to shoot our people, now they are shooting us with their cameras,” Tshepo laments at one point. And he gets menacingly angry with Tyler.
Siya directs Tyler to go to the river. That’s where Tshepo and his brother catch Tyra and Siya locked in a smothering kiss. Tshepo whisks Tyler’s arm away from around Siya and holds Tyler in a chokehold, gives her an overdose of shots, and lets her drop lifeless in the trampled grass (they had trampled all over the grass in the scuffle). Let her fall into a coma in the veld, then his brother takes Tyra to the bank of the river and submerges her in it.
The Vaal River is practically the lifeblood of the Vaal Triangle. It plays an omniscient role in the stories of Gogo, Siya, and Tyler, in a spiritual way—the body of the water of the Vaal River, which has always been there since the beginning of time, shall always be there. It is an essential character in Jewel, full to the brink of the banks, and the dull sound of it gliding down, majestically, in its stillness. In essence, fearful. I’m still pondering the writers’ use of the black snake in the river. That could be added to the mystique and riddle of Jewel. Imagine the short exchange between Siya and Tyler by the river.
Siya, “Was he a teacher? Your father?”
“No, a Cop.”
“I can see why you come here.” (scoffs) “Why?”
Tyler (V.O.) “The river. Always flowing in one direction. A bit like time just moving ahead, taking you with it to where you need to be.”